I spoke long--gently--kindly to her. It reached her heart--it touched the better feelings of what might have been a fine, though exquisitely sensitive, mind; and, throwing away the poniard, she cast herself at my feet, where, clasping my knees, she wept till her agony of tears became perfectly fearful. I did everything I could to tranquillize her; I entreated, I persuaded, I reasoned, I even caressed. There was something so lovely, yet so terrible in it all--her face, her form, her agitation, the sweetness of her voice, the despairing, heart-broken expression of her eyes, that, in spite of her crime, I raised her from my feet, I held her in my arms, and I promised to do all that she would have me. After a time she began to recover herself; and, gently disengaging herself from me, she gazed at me with a look of calm, powerful, painful regret, that I never can forget. "Count Louis," she said, "you must abhor me; and you have, alas! learned to do so at a moment when I have learned to love you the more. Your kindness has made me weep. It was what I needed,--it has cleared a cloud from my brain, and I now find how very, very guilty I am. Do not take me to your arms; I am unworthy they should touch me;--but fly from me, and from this place of horror, as speedily as you can, for I will not take advantage of the generous offer you make, to do that which I so ungenerously asked. I asked it in madness; for I feel that, within the last few hours, my reason has not been with me. It slept:--I have now wept; and it is awake to all the misery I have brought upon myself. Go--go--leave me; I will stay and meet the fate my crime deserves. But, oh! I cannot bear to think upon the dishonour and misery of my father's old age!" and again she wept as bitterly as before. Again I applied myself to soothe her; and imprudently certainly, perhaps wrongly, insisted upon carrying away the evidence of her guilt, and disposing of it as she had at first demanded. But two short streets lay between the spot where we were and the old boundary of the city, over which it was easy to cast the body into the water below. At that hour I was not likely to meet with any one, as all the sober inhabitants of the town were by this time in their first sleep, and the guard had made its round some time before. I told her all this, and expressed my determination not to leave her in such dreadful circumstances; so that, seeing me resolved upon doing what I had proposed, the natural horror of death and shame overcame her first regret at the thought of implicating me, and she acquiesced.